Scott McLaughlin has ended his two-year winless drought with a dominant victory in the season finale at Laguna Seca, with Marcus Armstrong finishing seventh in a clean race and Scott Dixon signing off his Chip Ganassi Racing career with a seventeenth-place finish.
McLaughlin led the field to green but the race was temporarily halted with a full course yellow due to Sting Ray Robb rear ending Dennis Hauger on the approach to Turn 6.
The race resumed on lap four, and McLaughlin was able to maintain his lead over Palou and started to pull away. Armstrong was able to maintain eighth, and Dison started to move up the field from fifteenth.
In a bid to break away from the conventional strategy to make progress up the field, Dixon pitted on lap ten and elected to put on new hard tyres to extend his stint. At this time, McLaughlin held a two second lead over Palou, with Kyle Kirkwood holding third place.
Palou elected to pit on lap eighteen, and McLaughlin and Kirkwood headed into the lane on lap twenty. Dixon’s strategy split left him in a net fifth, but with a significant gap to the other cars. Kirkwood and Palou merged once Kirkwood headed back on track, and Palou, who had warmer tyres, was able to maintain his net second place and quickly got in front of Kirkwood.
Armstrong remained one of the few cars that had not pitted by lap twenty-two and sat in second place. McLaughlin sat in ninth, with Dixon slightly further back in twelfth.
Dixon soon headed back into the lane from seventh, and fell down to twenty-second once he reemerged on track by lap thirty.
McLaughlin started to pull away from the drivers behind and held close to a five-second lead by lap thirty-two.
Drivers started to build gaps both in front and behind as the race went over forty laps without a yellow. By lap forty-nine, Dixon had climbed back up to ninth but was soon due for another stop as he aimed to make the four-stop strategy work.
Armstrong had moved back into the top ten by lap fifty-two as drivers started to cycle back through the lane.
By lap fifty-five, the gap between McLaughlin and Kirkwood had reduced to just over three seconds. The gap slowly started to reduce over the coming laps, with McLaughlin driving conservatively to make sure he could hit his strategy targets.
With thirty to go, the gap had reduced to two and a half seconds. Armstrong sat in seventh, ten seconds behind Christian Lungaard and four seconds ahead of Marcus Ericsson. Dixon, in his final race with Chip Ganassi Racing, sat in sixteenth.
The gap between McLaughlin and Kirkwood had closed to seven tenths by lap seventy-three, but the Kiwi was able to quickly extend the gap back up to over two seconds.
The distance between them started to yo-yo as they both reduced and widened the gap over the last twenty laps, and sat at a second and a half with ten to go.
Meanwhile, Armstrong ran in no-mans land as he held a three second gap over Palou with five to go, and Dixon started to stalk the back of Rinus Veekay for seventeenth.
McLaughlin was able to withstand the pressure to bring home his first victory in over two years, with Armstrong maintaining seventh and Dixon bringing home seventeenth. Kirkwood was able to finish in second, ahead of Alexander Rossi for Ed Carpenter Racing.
2026 marks the end of Dixon’s streak of winning at least one race per season, with his last victory for Chip Ganassi Racing coming on July 6 2025, at Mid-Ohio.
This race also marked the end of a historical era for the Kiwi and Chip Ganassi Racing, with Dixon amassing six championships, an INDY500 win, multiple INDY500 pole positions and front row starts, and one Champ Car victory, and fifty-eight INDYCAR wins – with Dixon firmly expecting to return to the top in his 2027 season with Arrow McLaren.
INDYCAR will now go on break, and will return on March 6 for the Grand Prix of St. Pete, with big driver changes happening throughout the grid.
